“_Doctor._ Ay, Sir, there are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure; their malady convinces The great assay of art; but, at his touch— Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand— They presently amend. _Macduff._ What’s the disease he means? _Malcolm._ ’Tis called the evil, A most miraculous work in this good king; Which often since my here-remain in England I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself knows best; but strangely-visited people, All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures, Handing a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers; and ’tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction.” Ben Jonson contains some excellent prescriptions. Thus, for old age:— “Seedpearl were good new boiled with syrup of apples, Tincture of gold, and coral, citron-pills, Your elicampane root, myrobalanes— ... Burnt silk and amber; you have muscadel good in the house.— I doubt we shall not get Some English saffron, half a dram would serve; Your sixteen cloves, a little musk, dried mints, Bugloss, and barley-meal.” On the divergence of opinions among physicians:— “One would have a cataplasm of spices, Another a flayed ape clapped to his breast, A third would have it a dog, a fourth an oil, With wild cats’ skins.” Or if the patient called in the wise woman:— “A good old woman— Yes, faith, she dwells in Sea Coal Lane, did cure me With sodden ale and pellitory of the wall.” One learns from Ben Jonson that at St. Katherine’s by the Tower there were lunatic asylums:— “Those are all broken loose Out of St. Katherine’s, where they used to keep The better sort of mad folks.” The cunning man or woman was a kind of physician and in large practice. He undertook to cure all diseases under the sun by the “Ephemerides,” the marks on almanacks of lucky or unlucky days. Besides his medical learning he knew how to advise in the matter of winning at horse races; in card playing, how to win; he could search for things lost, he sold charms, he told girls about their future lovers, and he erected astrological figures. Often he was a physician by profession, like that unfortunate Dr. Lambe, done to death by the crowd in the City for being an astrologer or cunning man. The level of medical science in the seventeenth century may be judged by the prescriptions which follow:— “(1) For Dimness of sight. For dimness of the Eyes, eat 12 leaves of Rue in a morning with bread and butter and it will very much availe.” For the stopping of bleeding